Housing starts decreased 3% last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 861,000, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Since November 2011, new home construction was up 21.6%.

Construction of single-family homes, which made up two-thirds of housing starts last month, dropped 4.1% in November to a rate of 565,000 units. Single-family construction was up 22.8% from a year earlier.

The figures were below expectations. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast overall housing starts would drop to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 865,000, which would have been a 3.2% decline from October’s previously reported figures.

But that may not necessarily be the whole picture — there was some good real estate construction news today, if you were looking for it.

Via Dave Lutz, a trader at Stifel Nicolaus, comes the following observations:

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